TODAY, A REVIEW of some of our chief executive's thoughts on tourism, 'one of our pillar industries', as uttered in a speech on Monday to a big international pow-wow - Tourist Development Under a New Paradigm (I'll take 10 pennies for that dime, thank you).
'Our investment in this sector is based on a practical reality: tourism offers wide economic benefits.'
Let us look at these benefits more closely and from the perspective that if you buy something for two dimes and sell it for three, then your benefit is one dime, not three. Economic benefit in tourism is calculated on a net basis, just as it is in trade. If we export $3 worth of goods and import $2 worth, the contribution to our gross domestic product is $1, not $3.
And, as the first chart shows, if you subtract what Hong Kong residents spend on trips abroad from what visitors spend on trips here, then in the past four years, Hong Kong has taken a net loss, not a net gain from tourism. Some benefit, Mr Tung.
You may, however, comfort yourself, sir, that the overall impact is a small one. We are talking of the equivalent of little more than 2 per cent of GDP at its worst - some pillar industry.
But you may also want to take into account that this still presents an overly optimistic picture. Most of what visitors spend here goes to pay for imported goods - foreign foods in restaurants, foreign wares in shops, foreign-made cars to take them around town and even foreign cement, steel, glass and fittings for the hotels in which they stay. It is all deducted from the final figures for GDP. Meanwhile, very little of what Hong Kong residents buy on trips abroad comes from our exports to the countries they visit. If you want a wide economic benefit, you may do better to encourage Hong Kong people to stay at home.